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I touched Micah's arm, stopped him in the middle of undoing one of his cufflinks. "Stop for a minute." He turned puzzled eyes to me.
"You're nervous again," Nathaniel said. "Why?"
I shook my head, then looked across the bed. Jean-Claude was still across the bed, but he was leaning on one of the big wooden posts. His arms entwined around it as he watched us. His face was neutral, but I'd been further into his head tonight than ever, in one special area.
"Shit," I said.
"What?" Micah and Nathaniel asked together.
"I know what's wrong."
They both looked at me, but it was Jean-Claude that I looked at. "It's you," I said.
"I have seen your men nude before," he said in that pleasant neutral voice.
"We've been in bed all naked and sweaty, Anita," Nathaniel said.
"Yes, but you've never had sex with him. I had sex with him."
"Jean-Claude has fed off me, Anita," Micah said, "has had more of my blood than yours."
I looked at Micah. "Are you saying having him take blood is the same thing as having sex with him?"
He shrugged, and I watched his face shut down to the look he wore when he wasn't certain what look I wanted. "I've had sex that didn't feel as good as Jean-Claude's feedings."
"Then you were doing the sex wrong," I said.
He smiled. "I was young; I got better."
"Yes, you did," I said, and smiled back.
He kissed me, then moved back and gave me a searching look. He moved past me to put the first cufflink on the bedside table. He started on the other sleeve, his back to me. I glanced up and found that I wasn't the only one watching him.
Jean-Claude's neutral, beautiful face watched us all. We had been naked and sweaty in a bed together. Hell, some nights the pile had included Asher and Jason. It just depended on who had fed whom last. So why was I suddenly bothered by Jean-Claude watching Micah take off his shirt?
I suddenly had a smart idea. I don't have that many of them, not about my own emotional life anyway. "I know what's wrong," I said again.
They all looked at me. I touched Micah's naked back, but looked at Jean-Claude. "It was what we did tonight with Augustine."
Jean-Claude sat on the corner of the bed, one arm still wrapped around the bedpost. "What exactly are you referring to, ma petite? We did many things with Augustine tonight."
"I know that everyone thinks we're all snogging each other's brains out, but tonight was the first time I'd ever seen two men kiss. I've never even seen someone do..." I faltered. God, was I still such a baby? No, damn it, I was a grown-up. "I've never seen anal sex before, let alone between two men. Let alone between my lover and a stranger." I took in a big breath and let it out, and went to the edge of the bed, a little closer to Jean-Claude. "Am I making any sense?"
"You were disturbed by what you saw," he said.
"Wait," Nathaniel said. The wait turned me to him. He was propped up on the pillows, the sheet forgotten in his lap, so that he was barely covered at all, but his face showed he wasn't even thinking about it. "How did you feel when Jean-Claude kissed Auggie?"
I opened my mouth, then closed it, because I wasn't sure what the answer was. How had I felt? "I didn't mind it. It was... interesting." That wasn't true. I looked down at the bedspread and said, "No, I... it was interesting."
"Interesting bad, or interesting good?" Nathaniel said.
Without looking up, I answered, "Good."
Someone sighed, and I wasn't sure which of them had done it. I looked up, slowly, and no one was looking at me like I'd said something awful. I don't know why I thought anyone in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I'd seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn't I been horrified, but I'd liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn't. It had felt strangely right, as if I'd been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn't felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?
Micah touched my arm. "So many thoughts flying over your face--what are you thinking?"
"That I don't feel bad, and shouldn't I feel bad about it."
He looked puzzled, frowned. "Bad about what?"
"Shouldn't it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?"
"Did it bother you?"
I shook my head. "Not at the time, no."
He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. "But it's bothering you now. Why?"
"Did it bother you to watch us like that?"
He gave me a look. "I've watched you have sex with other men before, Anita."
I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.
"I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine."
I looked at him, happy he'd helped me, but uncomfortable that he'd had to help me.
"Did it bother you?" Micah asked me.
I shook my head. "No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was..." My breath shivered out of me. "It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together."
"Then it's okay," Micah said. "Don't feel bad because you don't feel bad."
Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. "It sounds stupid when you say it out loud."
He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. "It's not stupid, Anita. It's how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes."
I drew back enough to see his face. "You're okay with everything we did tonight. You don't think we're evil or something."
He chucked me under the chin. "That's Richard's voice in your head, not mine."
I nodded. He was right, on part of it.
He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. "Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm."
I wanted to, in fact I couldn't think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn't touch my robe, and I didn't climb on the bed.
Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.
I turned with a little gasp. "You're naked."
He frowned at me. "Yes, we always sleep naked."
I shook my head, and said, "But..." then I realized what was wrong. I'd sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true menage ¨¤ trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn't been fact, until tonight.
I tried to put it into words. "I knew in theory you liked men as well as women," I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I'd ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he'd vanish.
"But now you know in fact, and you think less of me," he said, in a voice as empty as his face.
"No, not less, just..." I tried again. "In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other's dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don't undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don't sleep with them, or... oh, hell." I looked up at Micah. "Won't it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?"
Micah laughed. "Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?" I frowned at him. "I don't..." I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. "Fuck you," I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I'd lost the argument. I wasn't even sure it was an argument.
"Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself." His face held a hint of humor now.
I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. "Stop it, all of you."
"Stop what?" Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.
"Don't you dare laugh at me."
"Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?" Jean-Claude's neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.
"No," I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.
"Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?" Micah's mouth was twitching at the edges.
I glared at them all. "Maybe."
"Anita--" Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. "Anita, remember I thought I'd have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true menage ?trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj."
